Friday, September 23, 2011

Elizabeth Shue Would Be Proud

I'm coming to America! This has nothing to do with the post, but Neil Diamond's classic song is currently on my iPod and I am loving it. I once saw a Neil Diamond tribute act and the fake Neil sang this song 6 times over the course of 3 "sets." It was a glorious, yet befuddling experience.

Do you think Elizabeth Shue would have liked it? I bet she doesn't like Neil and that's why she had to play drunken prostitute with Nicholas Cage. He's incredibly demanding. I think he has babsitter fantasies too, like Mark Chmura and Ryan Phillippe. And that's my segue into what I actually want to write about.

When I was 17 I babysat for some neighbors. They have three kids and at the time the oldest was a freshman in high school, but was out of town. The middle son was maybe 5th grade and the youngest daughter was first grade maybe. I don't remember exactly. Anyway, I was watching the youngest two kids.

I arrived at their house around 6 or 7pm. Found out they just ordered a pizza for us. A Big Foot one from Pizza Hut or Little Caesar's. I can't remember which one had that pizza. Anyway, I started the evening off successfully by not hearing the doorbell ring and waiting an extra hour for the pizza. It arrived finally and was fairly cold, but it's pizza, so who really cares about that.

After calling the pizza place back, I received a call from my best friend. However, I didn't know it was my best friend as the family didn't have caller ID and he disguised his voice in order to play a prank on me. I also was not expecting to receive a personal call while babysitting.

The phone rang and in my friend's typical fashion of going all out with things the phone call went as such.

Me: Hello.
Friend: I'm going to kill you.
Me: .... (hanging up)

After I hung up, friend called back to explain his ruse, but not before I walked around and made sure all of the doors were locked, the windows were sealed, and having armed myself with a whisk and an oven mitt.

To give you an idea of my friend's mindset, he once "pranked" my mother by calling her, impersonating a police officer, and informing her that I died while riding my bike. I will have to write something about this in a future post, but he didn't always think before he pranked.

Once I disarmed, my nerves settled, and my appetite was sated with Pepperoni pizza my misadventure in babysitting resumed.

The boy went downstairs to play video games on their Sega Saturn. The girl and I decided to watch Thumbelina upstairs. If you know me at all, you know I have always had a difficult time staying up late if my brain doesn't want to be up late. Sure enough about a half hour into the movie and I'm out cold.

I wake up to the end song and the credits. I don't remember, but there's a good chance the girl didn't even know I fell asleep, since she was so engrossed in the fairy tale.

Anyway, movie over and I'm awake. I hear the garage door open and assume it's the parents home early and I don't have the kids in bed, nor have they taken their vitamins like I was supposed to make sure happened.

In a panic, I tried to bargain with the kids to at least run up to their rooms and get ready for bed. They refused. I ended up being somewhat successful by promising no teeth brushing and no vitamins. They started upstairs as I pocketed their vitamins and dispensed some of them around the house. Their voyage upstairs was short lived and luckily it was just the older brother coming home from out of town.

Perfect, I thought. He would be able to help me convince the younger ones to go to bed. He wasn't much help, he just went downstairs and played video games.

Soon after that the parents came home - I somehow still got paid despite not doing a single thing right that evening. Kids were still up, not even in their pajamas, teeth weren't brushed, and vitamins were hidden under couch cushions, but I was well rested.

I took my evening's wages and walked up the street to my house all while on alert for some crazy stalker to jump out of the reeds and slash me to bits. This was my first and last time ever baby sitting. I'm just not very good at it.